In response to a recent article by Raj Jugernauth in l?express on drugs and violence, I would like to make the following comments.

Since 1961, the USA has strong-armed most countries into signing UN conventions to join the global ?war on drugs?. It is quite clear to any dispassionate observer that this prohibition policy has lamentably failed; in fact, it has made things a lot worse.

The former Interpol director, Raymond Kendall, recently declared in ?Le Monde? that the drugs war is lost, that enforcement policies had failed to protect the world from drugs, and that it was now time for ?harm reduction? programmes instead of the obsolete and unsuccessful prohibition policies. He therefore calls for Europe to promote a more imaginative and practical policy - that we should ?MEDICALISE? drugs instead of ?CRIMINALISING? them. He advocates the prescription of pharmaceutical opiates to addicts by a carefully selected and controlled group of doctors, and asserts that this will result in an 80% reduction in addicts deaths, and a highly significant drop in the spread of diseases like AIDS (since controlled prescription and drug administration cancels the need to share needles). Crucially, he believes the harm reduction model will result in a dramatic reduction in crimes committed by addicts, because having prescribed drugs allows them the opportunity to lead reasonably normal lives with no need to commit crime.

Should we consider harm reduction as a more viable policy than prohibition in Mauritius? Let us look at what prohibition has achieved so far:

1. A criminal justice system that is grinding to a halt because of the increasing proportion of prisoners who are drug addicts.

2. This leads to the ?revolving door? principle where prisoners released from prison rapidly find themselves back inside prison because the underlying addiction problem has not been addressed. On release, they resort to crime to feed their addiction, thus leading to an increase in burglary, theft, and crimes of violence.

3. Prohibition means that the prohibited article increases in value and tempts more people to dabble in drugs in order to make quick and fast money.

4. The vast amount of money made from drugs leads to the corruption of police officers, customs officers, solicitors, judges, and anyone involved in the prohibition of drugs. Is this an outlandish statement? Not if you can mention (apart from Deelchand) any big time drugs smuggler who has been convicted of large scale smuggling! The cold reality is that it is invariably the addict or street hustler who gets caught and sentenced to ludicrously long sentences without remission and without taking into account the time spent on remand.

5. Drugs are now cheaper than ever, which can only mean that prohibition has failed. Ignore the publicity gimmicks and the media fanfare that accompany the arrest of someone at the airport with a kilo of heroin. The problem is how many tens of kilos have passed through before that headline-grabbing 1 kilo?

6. Prohibition of drugs also means that drug taking implements are also illegal. Therefore addicts are forced to share needles in order to get their next ?fix? and this has led to an alarming rise in AIDS in Mauritius. It?s no use drug free people shouting ?serves them right?: the AIDS suffering addict could be targeting you or your family next in order to get money for his next dose!

SO WHAT DO WE DO? Do we continue this abject failure of prohibition or do we address the problem more constructively, as the ex head of Interpol is urging us to? Should we consider addiction as an illness and therefore provide a proper scheme of treatment? Should addicts be prescribed and administered drugs in a clinical environment, and supervised by medical personnel? Or do we persist with this myopic policy of locking up vulnerable people for long periods without any treatment and then releasing them to commit more crimes to feed their addiction?

It is high time we look at this issue seriously and dispassionately. The prisons cannot cope with the increasing number of addicts we are locking up. Soon, society may find it difficult to function properly with an underclass of people who are rendered hopeless by their addiction and our apparent lack of care towards them.

R. A. J.